Call Newspapers staff members once again were moved by what area youngsters said in nominating their mothers for the Mother of the Year competition.

Since 1990, the Call has been honoring mothers whose families believe they deserve special distinction to the title and most of the entries have the same theme.

“I am not the best student in math class,” wrote 13-year-old Wendy Carmack of Oakville.

She nominated her mother, Linda Harris, for the Mother of the Year honor.

“When I don’t get the best grade, she doesn’t yell at me or say I’m grounded. She asks me what part I didn’t understand so she can get me help,” Wendy wrote.

A dozen of the 40 entrants this year noted their mothers were single parents, either through death or divorce.

“She’s a nurse who helps people with cancer,” 10-year-old Tori Harrison wrote about her mother, Megan Harrison of Lemay. “She doesn’t embarrass me in front of my friends. All my friends think she is such a cool mom.”

From reading the entries this year, it seems as if “giving back” has reached preteen readers this year.

Twenty-three of this year’s entries mentioned giving back some of the love and attention showered on them by their mothers as their motivation for nominating their moms.

“She and my father adopted me and my three sisters all together,” Lemay’s Dameris French, 14, wrote about her mother, Patricia. “It will be eight years that we have been with them on July 7.”